skirmishes echoed between the buildings.
The bunker entrance was sealed by a pair of broad, heavy doors, secured by a chunky combination lock.
“Any guesses as to the code?” Reston said.
“Search me.”
“Then we’ll just have to use the universal lockpick — brute force.” He went and fetched two of the Serpents’ l-guns that still carried some juice. Handing one to Mal, he said, “Aim for the middle, the gap where the doors meet. Full charge.”
Standing well back, they zapped the doors repeatedly until the guns ran dry. When the smoke and their vision cleared, they found that they had created a gap just large enough for a person to squeeze through. They waited a minute or so for the twisted edges of the hole to cool; when the metal was still hot to the touch but not burningly so, they slithered inside.
A trapezoidal tunnel stretched ahead, illuminated at intervals by caged lightbulbs and descending at a shallow gradient. They proceeded down it, alert for danger. Every so often the walls around them shook as yet another building above them took a hit.
The tunnel disgorged into a huge chamber. A dozen suits of Serpent armour stood in rows, mounted on purpose-built modules. There were scores of empty modules for all the suits currently in deployment in the field. Weaponry hung on racks. A small team of technicians were checking the equipment, running battery tests and diagnostic workups. They were obviously doing their best to ignore the noises coming from above, busying themselves with tasks so as not to have to think about the devastation being wrought on their city. Anxiety was etched on every face; shoulders were hunched, voices were strained.
She and Reston were not spotted coming in. They ducked behind a workbench strewn with random pieces of armour. There, in whispers, they debated their next move. Reston proposed taking one of the technicians hostage and using him as a bargaining tool to force the rest of them to get two suits ready. “They can tell us how to activate them, how to fly them, everything.”
“You think they’ll go for that?”
“Look at them. They’re scared out of their wits. These are civilians, not soldiers. They don’t want to die.”
“Okay. But this had better work.”
Mal drew her macuahitl and stole across the floor to the nearest technician, a thin, bespectacled and extremely gawky young specimen. Coming up behind him, she put the blade to his neck and said quietly in his ear, “Do not scream. Do not panic. Just do as I say and I promise you won’t get hurt. Nod if you understand.”
He did.
“There are two of us,” she went on, “and we want two of those suits of armour. You and the other boffins set them up for us, get us into them, and instruct us on what to do with them. Help us out, and this can all be over with in no time. Yes?”
Another nod, accompanied by a small, terrified whimper.
“Great. Call everyone over, then, quick as you can. Any false moves, any funny business, and the last sound you’ll ever hear will be the hiss of your breath escaping through the hole in your windpipe.”
“Ahem,” said the technician, trying to clear a very dry throat. “People? Little problem here. Can I have your attention?”
It went surprisingly smoothly. The technicians were a biddable lot, as Reston had predicted. One of their own being held at swordpoint was a convincing argument for co-operation. Being smart men and women, they grasped that they were in the presence of two individuals who were not only capable of killing them all, but quite prepared to if the situation demanded it. They knuckled down, and within minutes two of the suits had been trundled out from the racks and Mal and Reston were being given a crash course in flying technique.
“These things are actually beautifully straightforward,” said one of the technicians, the seniormost and by all appearances the man in charge. “A complex system with an uncomplicated interface. The flight dynamics — roll, pitch and yaw — are all conditional on your own movements. Basically, lean or bend in the direction you want to go and the armour will comply. The antigrav excitation selector is incorporated into the helmet, so as to keep both hands free. You lower your head to descend, raise it to ascend. That’s the only part that takes some mastering. The rest is no trouble.”
The suits had to be put on in sections. Mal kept her macuahitl and the hostage technician in close contact while the pieces of armour were clamped onto her and linked together. He trembled like a leaf throughout the process, casting imploring looks at his colleagues as if to say, Please don’t do anything rash. They obliged, and Mal and Reston were soon fully suited.
It felt weird being contained head to toe inside this hard, jointed casing. Mal experienced a stifling surge of claustrophobia. She wanted to rip the armour off, get out of it any way she could. Be calm, she told herself. It was only a few pieces of light metal. She moved a leg experimentally, then an arm. It barely felt any different from normal — a little more resistance, that was all. She flexed one gauntleted hand. The segmented fingers rippled like caterpillars.
“Faceplate appears and disappears at the touch of this sensor,” said the head technician. He pressed a spot on the side of Mal’s helmet, and all at once everything went yellow and she realised she was staring out through the snakelike lenses. “The tinting on the eye screens filters out glare from l-gun bolts. That’s crucial after dark, so as not to compromise your night vision.”
Reston tried his faceplate too. “Nice.”
His voice came directly to Mal via her right ear.
“All the suits are in constant comms-link contact,” the head technician explained. “There are two channels, proximity and general. Proximity, the default setting, works up to a range of three hundred metres. General is a wide-spectrum band that picks up all Serpent Warrior chatter at all times. Is there anything else you want to know?”
“Is there anything else we need to know?” Reston replied.
“I don’t think so. Now, will you kindly let poor Yolyamanitzin there go? The boy looks like he’s about to faint.”
“Give us a couple of l-guns and we’re done,” said Mal.
The guns were lodged into her and Reston’s hands. Mal laid her macuahitl aside and gave Yolyamanitzin a gentle shove. “Off you go.” The young technician almost collapsed to the floor in relief.
“I would wish you godspeed, but I can’t bring myself to,” said the head technician, finding some courage now that none of his people was in direct danger any more. “Whoever you are, coming in here dressed in holy garb, you don’t deserve to get away with this. The Great Speaker knows all, sees all. Vengeance will be his.”
“What you mean is you’re going to blab to him about us as soon as we’re gone,” said Reston.
“That’s right.” The man blinked defiantly. “And to Colonel Tlanextic.”
“How?”
“Through the hotline link.”
“What hotline link? That one over there?” Reston was looking at a console with a number of telephone receivers attached to it, each a different colour.
“That very one.”
Reston charged up his l-gun and blasted the console to pieces.
“Not any more you’re not,” he said.
Mal lifted her head… and flew.
It was strangely exhilarating and exhilaratingly strange. Her feet were off the floor. She was floating. She had to resist the urge to waft her arms and legs as though treading water in a swimming pool.
She lifted her head again and rose a little higher. She wobbled uncertainly in the air. She felt on the verge of overbalancing and inclined herself forwards ever so slightly to compensate. All at once she was in motion. The further over she leaned, the faster she went. Wishing to decelerate, she instinctively straightened up. The suit of armour halted, returning to hover mode.
“This is…” She couldn’t think of a word for it.
“I know!” Reston beamed, executing a tentative midair pirouette. “Where has this been all my life?”
